Ramona Tan becomes a family business venture

Three generations at Ramona Tan: Onaletia Petersen, left, her daughter, Taeler, and her mother, Venetia Farmer. Petersen and Farmer own the tanning and hair salon on Main Street. Sentinel photo/Karen Brainard

Three generations at Ramona Tan: Onaletia Petersen, left, her daughter, Taeler, and her mother, Venetia Farmer. Petersen and Farmer own the tanning and hair salon on Main Street. Sentinel photo/Karen Brainard

Family ties are important to the mother/daughter business duo at Ramona Tan.

“At any given moment we have four generations in this salon working,” said Venetia Farmer, co-owner and cosmetologist at Ramona Tan.

“I like the convenience of having a family-owned business,” said her daughter and business partner, Onaletia Petersen.

Petersen purchased Ramona Tan last year and opened it in July, keeping the name. Petersen’s husband, Carl, and her father, Jim Farmer, remodeled the store, adding cabinetry and changing the lighting, fans, flooring and curtains.

Venetia Farmer, who has worked at Hair Zone and at Aloha Hair Studio in Poway, joined the business and added hair styling and coloring services.

“I’m strictly the hairdresser. We’re a team but she really is the tanning part of it,” Farmer said of her daughter.

Ramona Tan offers tanning beds with three different levels, airbrush spray tanning and “every entity you can imagine in hair except for perms,” said Farmer.

The mother and daughter hope to bring in manicures and pedicures.

Farmer stressed that sanitation is very important to them and said tanning beds are completely cleaned after each use.

Ramona Tan sells accelerators—lotions that help to hold the tan.

“If you don’t use an accelerator, you lose 60 percent of your rays from the bed,” said Petersen.

Sizes and prices vary for accelerators with the smallest being a packet—good for one or two uses—costing $3. Many clients who buy a bottle of accelerator store it at the shop.

Farmer said it’s a “perfect world” to work with her daughter.

“To walk in and see my beautiful daugher every morning is amazing,” she said.

Sometimes she also sees two of her grandchildren at the shop. Petersen’s 10-year-old daughter, Taeler, helps out and her 13-year-old son, James, is also there occasionally.

To top it off, Farmer’s son, Branden, is the manager of Marketing Worx, just a block away.

Recently Farmer moved her mother from Arkansas to Ramona and expects that she will also be involved with the business.

The Farmer family has lived in Ramona for 28 years.

“We love this community. This community has been very good to us,” said Farmer.

Ramona Tan is at 780-C Main St., and can be reached at 760-788-9990. The shop is open Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Beginning Feb. 26, Ramona Tan will be open on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Airbrush spray tanning is by appointment and tanning packages are available.

Hairstyling, by appointment only, is available each weekday except for Wednesdays. Hair products are also sold in the store. More information is available at ramonatanandspa.com.